Reading through comments here on the Z, I'm encouraged to upgrade the asus p5q-e, bought at the release of Xite-1, running a 2.3Ghz core 2 quad intel 8gb ram.

Seeing that after Skylake there will be no more support for os older than win 10 was enough of a prompt. I'm currently running Win7 32bit and will probably stay with it, primarily to use the sequencers in modular IV and keep functionality of the Scope environment but also to enable the use of the current outboard gear which doesn't have and won't get win10 drivers

There are a few complaints with the current setup which I'm hopng a new setup will resolve in that with the more recent usb midi devices I experience drop outs in the midi data and glitches and pops in the audio playback from Sonar as projects get more complicated.

The processor/motherboard recommendations on the Z appear to be for pci cards and the two Pulsars will stay in this current machine where they work well.
As well as an Xite-1 it'll need to run a firewire Pacarana, Ableton, sample modeling instuments, usb 2 for the external gear
And here's where I get confused...
Should the cpu be i7 Skylake 5790 or 6700, or i7 5775c
Socket 1151, 2011 or 1150
Chipset Z97 or Z170, H170
Which RAM?
Which HDD?
Which SDD?
What else needs to be taken in to consideration?

Experinces seem very varied on which is currently the best setup, perhaps I'm reading in to it all too much, definitely not reading enough, but still I'm wondering, what is the best computer for Xite-1?

Hi
I'm just using a 2nd hand computer i bought some weeks ago, that's one of the best i've used for scope since years !
P9X79 asus card, i7 3930K (6CPU 3.2 to 3.8ghz), socket 2011, C600 chipset.
IRQ distribution is so nice i don't need to close any usb port , each pcie port got it's own irq without any share, perfect.
It's only pcie, so no pci port for old cards.
I use a 80g intel ssd for windows 7 64bit, with a cheap graphic card hd 4350, and 16gb ram (it was already in the computer i bought, I hope i can use it for Kontakt now )
It's really powerful, my Xite1 and samplitude seem to love it too
I even had a strange freeze problem with many 1156 boards that i don't have with this one.

I have a p5q3 with modded bios on another computer, with a xeon 3ghz, 4core, 12Mo cache, that can run 3.8ghz easily.
Those xeons can be found on ebay for cheap sometimes.
it can be used on p5q3 with a small sticker that you must add on some pins of the cpu (easy to find on amazon for a few dollars).

Thanks guppy,
great ideas, there's some good specs on those auctioned machines, irq sharing is a blight on this current machine
I guess I'm over reading it and any decent spec machine is ok
Will definitely be installing a Xeon in this machine to see what it can do.
I've been following the process at delidded and thats a sure purchase thanks again for this one

Best machines I have are a pair of Z97s using Supermicro motherboards.
An i7 4790k and an i7 5775C.
These are new builds but the designs were 2 years old.
Both use Windows 7 with the latest update for NVMe.
NVMe is needed for the 512GB Samsung 950 M.2s.
The Microsoft drivers suck so Samsung provides better drivers.
The M.2s have the OS+Apps and a 60GB Sample folder for Omnisphere 2.1.

Then I use a pair of MyDigitalSSD Slim 7 SSDs.
Phison controllers have 110,000 random access I/Os for maximum streaming.
But most SSDs are 80,000 random reads and usually fine.
Use SSDs for streaming samples.

The i7 5775C is the best audio CPU as it has 128mb of L4 cache.
Meant to be used for onboarx GFX.
Disabling onboard GFX and using a discrete GPU Card gives the cache to audio.
This allows the 3.3ghz CPU to do the same amount of work as my i7 4790k.
It runs much cooler and use 20-30 watts less.

Rumor has it that these CPUs were Xeons but once Skylake Xeons started choking they released the i7 5775C to help Skylake chips late rollout.
They are definately higher binned CPUs.